The international technology company SCHOTT has expanded its portfolio of standard BG6x Blue Glass filters and is now introducing BG6x HT high transmission blue glass filters with improved performance. The new filter variants offer an excellent transmission profile for high quality digital camera applications: significantly higher transmission in the visible spectrum by up to 2 percentage points at 0.21 mm material thickness while still providing high blocking in the IR range. SCHOTT’s new BG6x HT filters are therefore well-suited for photography in challenging light conditions.

“We have successfully entered the fast-growing international smartphone market in the last two years. Our Blue Glass filters (BG6x) are being used in the digital cameras of smartphones by several large international mobile device producers. With our new product family of HT filters we are confident that we are providing our customers with the right material for their future applications,” says Andreas Haedrich, Sales Director EMEA at SCHOTT Advanced Optics.

The filters of the specialty glass manufacturer SCHOTT are built into image sensors of high-tech cameras and boast several advantages over other materials available to date. The HT variants of the BG6X glasses offer significantly higher transmittance in the visible spectrum. “At a material thickness of 0.21 mm, the most widely used thickness for digital cameras, we were able to improve the transmittance by up to 2 percentage points. Photos taken with such a filter in low-light situations will result in less image noise and overall better picture quality,” Haedrich states. At a material thickness of 1.0 mm, the improvement of the transmittance is as high as 7 to 8 percentage points.

SCHOTT’s standard BG6x family as well as the new BG6x HT series also offer excellent climatic resistance for challenging environments. The Blue Glass filters are of a high internal quality, resulting from an extremely low-volume striae level and an extremely low bubble and inclusion level. Thanks to excellent production stability, the filters are also highly reproducible, with consistent transmission values and a constant refractive index from lot to lot and from melt run to melt run.

“We also offer customized solutions for special applications and are looking forward to speaking with interested partners,” Haedrich adds.

In addition, the material from SCHOTT offers a high bending strength of 120 MPa in the standardized and well-known 4-point-bending test, allowing processing companies to easily and safely include the BG filters into their production processes. Furthermore, the BG6x filters are environmentally friendly and free of hazardous substances antimony, cadmium, lead and chrome. Test reports by the internationally renowned company SGS substantiate this and are available upon request for all BG filters.